New Home? Don’t Let a Burglary Spoil the Honeymoon

Moving into a new home is exciting.  It’s also a time of transition, however, and it’s important to take a few minutes to pay attention to home security.

Prior to selling, many property owners will remodel, paint, clean or have other maintenance done to a home.  This gives access to a large number of workers to the home.  Most of these workers are honest, but it only takes one bad hire by a contractor or service company to set you up for theft.  These workers are able to see the types of locks on doors and windows, the interior layout of the home and what type of alarm, if any, the home has.  Sometimes, they’re loaned keys that can be copied or given the code to an alarm system.  If one of these individuals happens to be dishonest, they may just be casing the joint for criminal friends.

As you prepare to move into a new home, there are a number of steps you should take, and preferably before you spend your first night in the home.  Have locks to exterior doors or garages rekeyed or, better yet, replace them with new, high quality deadbolt locks.  Some locks are available with key control, which means keys can’t be copied at any old hardware store or key kiosk, but only at an authorized dealerership.  If the home has exterior gate or shed locks, replace those has well.

If the home has a security system, have an alarm company representative come out and review the system with you and make recommendations for improving the system.  Fully reset the alarm to clean out any old entry codes that might still be in the system, and set your own, new codes.

If there is a garage with a remote opener, have the code changed or, better yet, spend the $50 or so it costs to change to a rolling-code model.  These systems change the code at random and are much harder to crack than models with fixed codes.

These steps take very little time and effort, and will give you much greater peace of mind as you enjoy your first nights in your new home.

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Tags: alarm system, doors and windows, Home Security, locks, security system

This entry was posted on April 30, 2010 at April 30, 2010 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.